Dick's Sporting Goods jumps into the fray and 'takes a stand'

Dick's Sporting Goods has jumped directly into the fray after announcing Wednesday morning the company will no longer sell assault-style rifles and will ban the sale of guns to people under the age of 21 in its stores and online.

Dick's Sporting Goods has joined the gun debate

Mike Mozart

The New York Times characterizes the company's Wednesday morning announcement by company Chairman and CEO Edward Stack as "deliberately steering his company directly into the storm."

"Based on what’s happened and looking at those kids and those parents, it moved us all unimaginably," Stack said today on "Good Morning America," referring to the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 14 students and three educators.

"To think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, ‘We need to do something,'" Stack, whose father, Dick, started the business 70 years ago, explained. "And we’re taking these guns out of all of our stores permanently."

Coraopolis, Pennsylvania-based Dick's Sporting Goods also released a statement on Wednesday, signed by Stack that Dick’s will no longer sell assault-style rifles. It will also end sales of high capacity magazines and won’t sell to anyone under the age of 21. Stack said the company had never sold bump-stocks like those used by the gunman in October’s Las Vegas shooting,

The company is also calling on elected officials to enact “common sense gun reform,” such as an assault-style firearms ban, a minimum purchase age of 21, and a ban on high-capacity magazines and bump stocks. They are calling for private sale and gun show loopholes to be closed and universal background checks to be enacted.

“We’re staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. I’m a gun owner myself," Stack said. “We’ve just decided that based on what’s happened with these guns, we don’t want to be a part of this story and we’ve eliminated these guns permanently.”